Previews

Gran Turismo 4

The most anticipated game in the history of PlayStation 2 just got more reasons for fanfare. Can your heart handle it?

Spiffy:

Photo Mode is darn nifty; more classic cars; Nurbergring, the big daddy of all race courses.

Iffy:

Getting a printer/paper to print out Photo Mode shots; probably no vehicle damage.

The GT series is one powerful beast. Need proof? The first three games have sold a combined total of well over 30 million units worldwide. Car enthusiasts span the globe, and Gran Turismo has always had the goods to please each and every one of them -- and they snatched it up in droves. Regardless of what other publishers and developers can put together, Gran Turismo is virtually untouchable. It is, and likely shall ever be, the car sim.

A big reason for its success has been the series' creator and president of Polyphony, Kazunori Yamauchi. A life-long car enthusiast, he began working on the framework of GT when he was 15. In a closed-door meeting, Yamauchi-san showed off some new concepts for Gran Turismo 4. With a proposed release date of November 2004, the game is looking excellent and playing just as good. Along with reiterating the car list and courses, Yamauchi introduced the world to Photo Mode.

Photo Mode

In a sentence, Photo Mode lets you put any vehicle from the game into an environment, rotate both the car and the camera, and snap a picture. Why would you want to do this, you ask? Yamauchi explains that play time in the Gran Turismo series has been split in two ways. The most obvious one is racing your cars in competitive contests. However, gamers spend almost as much time watching the hi-res replays of said races. Think about it: how often did you check to see your digital driver pass the lead vehicle going into the final turn, and peeping it from every possible perspective? More than you'd like admit, I bet. Don't worry; I'm with you.

Now, here's the long explanation of Photo Mode. There are 16 environments specifically made for picture taking. Think of them as sets for photo shoots. They're made up of locations set all over the world, from Brooklyn to San Marco in Italy to Shibuya in Japan. Each one looks amazing. Additionally, any of the game's 50 plus race courses can be used. Once you pick your locale, it's time to choose your model. Any vehicle in GT4 can be used. That means over 500 car models, and any color option.

When parameters are set, it's time to position your ride and the camera. The game gives you two windows to do this. The larger one, on the left side, is an overhead view of the area. Here, you can move both the car (or cars) and the camera into position. The right window is smaller, and shows the view from the camera's lens. Tools on this same screen let you pan, raise, tilt, or lower the camera. You can even zoom or add motion blur. Tilting the car position is done from the aforementioned left window. Yamauchi is also an avid photographer, and he wanted this mode to allow you to do anything in this mode that you could in real photography. You can turn the camera so the shot is "the long way," or make the image black-and-white.

Once everything is perfect -- which can take a long freakin' time if you're as anal as I am -- you snap the photo. After a few seconds to render the image, it shows up in full-screen view. Its resolution is limited to that of your television. In actuality, it's a megapixel image. Do you know how I know? Because, using select USB printers, you can print out the picture. Believe me when I say these puppies are about as photo-realistic as digital images can get.
If you don't have a printer (and some high-quality paper) handy, you still have ways to showcase your clips. The game has a slide show that Yamauchi calls "intelligent." This means it will pan, fade, and do other nifty transition tricks on its own, recognizing where the car is, if there are other cars in the shot, etc. Also, the file size before rendering is highly compressed, and is small enough that you can trade shots between your friends. Of course, none of them will appreciate the time and effort you put into it, but that's the way things go.

This mode is right up my alley, and will likely appeal to a lot of other gamers. Even naysayers could be hooked if they just give it a chance. To me, it has more appeal than endless tweaking, because there's a tangible payoff. That's not to say that I'm against potentially endless tweaking, which the Gran Turismo series has always provided in spades.